The Poison Throne

  Marni practically carried them, one under each arm, and deposited them in a corner out of the way. She laid the table with bread and cheese and cold chicken, a bowl of salt, a bowl of mustard paste, two knives and a fork. She met Razi’s inquiring eye as she set down two beakers of cold milk and rolled her eyes to heaven.

  “It’s been boiled!” she exclaimed impatiently, “God forbid there should be humours in it,” and she lumbered off, wiping her hands on her apron and scowling at some under-chef who was slicing something too thin. Razi smiled to himself and took a piece of chicken onto his plate while Wynter began to pile bread and chicken and cheese onto her own.

  Razi played with his meat, shredding it into a pile of neat strips, then shoving it around with his finger. He eyed the amount of food Wynter was packing away and a slow grin began to creep up his face, making his big dark eyes dance with suppressed laughter. Wynter’s mouth was too full to permit any kind of conversation, but their eyes kept meeting as she shovelled yet more food down her. It was just like the old days, when they could make each other dissolve into giggles simply by looking.

  “Stop it!” she warned, spraying breadcrumbs from a too full mouth, “I’ll choke!”

  He grinned wider and contrived an innocent expression that only made her worse. Razi’s grin, her full belly and all around them the kitchen doing its work – it was so wonderful, so right that Wynter thought she might start to cry if she wasn’t careful.

  She took a deep breath, saw some similar emotion in Razi’s face and the two of them looked away from each other suddenly, taking great interest in the convoluted machinations of the kitchen. Marni glanced over at them, a moment of unguarded tenderness on her face, then she turned away, scolding some poor scuttling man who was in her way.

  “Where is Alberon, Razi?” Wynter asked. She kept her voice low and only glanced sideways at him. They had had no contact for the last five years; had, until now, not even been sure if the other had survived. Now, questions, if asked at all, would have to be asked gently, obliquely, for fear of opening old wounds or uncovering secrets best left hidden.

  Razi cleared his throat and shook his head. “I don’t know where Albi is, little sister. He is not here. Father says… Father says that he has sent him to the coast, to inspect the fleet.” Their eyes met briefly and Wynter looked away.

  Razi’s face told her that he doubted the King’s story, and Wynter’s mind filled with questions and her chest tightened with fear.

  Why would Alberon, legitimate son and sole heir to the throne, be sent so far from home after such a long and dangerous period of unrest? On the other hand, why would the King lie to Razi – his eldest boy and bastard son, much loved and trusted by the throne? Wynter had no answers, only fear, sly fear, skittering about in her heart like a secret disease.

  She glanced around the kitchen, at the sweating, toiling faces, the familiar domestic scene, and sensed the cold waters of politics running beneath it all. Vast and dark and rushing, ready to sweep any of them away. We must be careful, she thought, we must be careful.

  So much that she wanted to ask, but in court life there are things you cannot ask, not aloud, not in a crowded kitchen, not even of your oldest friend.

  Razi was tense as a horse at a starting gate, his dark eyes roaming the room, his agitation almost audible. He rubbed his fingers anxiously against his palms and Wynter longed to lay her hand on his, to stop him betraying himself so obviously.

  Behind Razi there was a tray of jam tarts cooling on the rack near the high window and, as Wynter watched, the Hungry Ghost lifted two of them to its invisible mouth and they disappeared into mid-air, a bite at a time. Wynter nudged Razi with a smile and stole a glance at Marni, waiting for her usual stormy response to the pesky spirit. Things would be thrown! Curses would be bellowed! Marni’s ongoing feud with the Hungry Ghost had always been good for a laugh.

  Razi lifted his eyes to see what Wynter was nudging him for and his dark face lost some of its colour. Wynter just had time to register this, when she saw Marni notice another two tarts float up and disappear in a shower of crumbs. The cook’s face clouded over with a moment of pure rage, and her expression stole Wynter’s smile from her. This wasn’t Marni’s usual melodramatic overreaction, this was something deeper rising to the surface, some seething undercurrent, tapped and exposed as if Marni’s head had been cut open for a moment and its contents revealed.

  Wynter saw the cook’s hand tighten around her ladle, her whole body shaking with the ferocity of her emotions. Then the giant woman turned her back, her face still wicked with feeling, and pretended not to see, as the invisible spirit demolished the tray of tarts.

  Wynter turned to Razi, her eyes wide. He was sighing with huge relief, his eyes on Marni as she stalked away.

  “I met Rory on my way here.” Wynter said it quietly, her voice purposely inaudible to anyone but her friend. Still, Razi’s reaction was shocking. He turned on her, spinning completely around in his seat to face her, his fists clenched, and she pulled away from him, momentarily frightened by the anger in his eyes.

  “Did he speak to you?” he hissed, his voice a deadly whisper.

  She shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t. I…”

  All the anger drained from Razi’s face in an instant, to be replaced by the same shaky relief he’d shown when Marni had allowed the tarts to be eaten. He slumped against the table and put his hand to his forehead. The breath seemed to be knocked out of him and it was only when he murmured, “Good man, Rory. Decent fellow,” that Wynter realised that his anger hadn’t been directed at her, but at Rory Shearing and the thought that the spirit might have spoken to her.

  “What’s going on, Razi?”

  He lifted his eyes and scanned the kitchen again, not answering.

  “Razi?”

  He tilted his head, resting his cheek on his hand, and Wynter realised that he was shielding his mouth from the view of the rest of the room.

  “Wynter. There are no ghosts anymore.” He locked eyes with her, he was telling her something very, very important here. Life or death important. “Father has decreed it. And so it must be.”

  Wynter laughed in disbelief, glanced furtively around the room and leaned in closer, searching his face. “What…?”

  “Listen to me. Listen. There are no ghosts, Wyn. Understand? Anyone who says otherwise, anyone who communes…? They’re gibbeted, Wynter.”

  That made her sit back, with a snort of disgust. “Razi, that’s not funny, I can’t believe you’d think that was funny—”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her in close. “I’m serious.”

  She snatched her hand away, rubbing the wrist. “It’s rumours. That’s all. Razi, have some sense! It’s your father’s enemies, spreading lies. The King would never—”

  “What way did you come home? Over the mountains, yes? Through the forests? Nothing but hamlets and woodcutters and boar, am I right?”

  She nodded dubiously, still rubbing her burning wrist.

  “I came home via the port road, Wyn. I came up through all the main towns. There are gibbets at every crossroads. There are cages, Wynter. Father has re-introduced the cages, and people seem more than willing to use them.”

  Oh God. Gibbets? Gibbets and cages? Here, where they had been illegal since the very day Jonathon took the throne? No. No, no, no.

  Since her journey north Wynter had become accustomed to the sudden scent of rotting flesh on the air, to turning a corner and being confronted with a ragged corpse, caged in iron, swinging in the breeze. But she never thought to find them here, never here.

  Even at the beginning of the insurrections, when the Circle of Lords were pressuring the King into an inquisition, Jonathon had not succumbed to temptation.

  The easiest way to make a people hate is to torture them into submission, he had said, Happy people are stable people. One will win more hearts and minds with justice than one will ever do with the whip.

  “Oh Razi,” she whispered. “W
hat has happened here?” Something else occurred to her and she looked up at him sharply. He flinched, as if anticipating what she was thinking. She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat and said, “Where are my cats, Razi? I met a stranger kitten on the moat bridge and it didn’t even reply to my greeting.” Her heart dropped to the soles of her feet at the look in his eyes. Then he couldn’t look at her anymore. He turned his head and gazed out into the kitchen for a moment as if trying to find a way to break terrible news.

  “No one speaks to cats anymore, sis. Please, please, don’t mention them to anyone.” He looked her in the eye again. “Please.”

  “Why?” she whispered, but then almost immediately held her hand up to stop his answer. She didn’t really want to know. Jonathon’s kingdom was the last in all of the Europes where cats still spoke to humans. Everywhere else, fear and superstition had driven a wedge between the species that had ended all but the most basic of communication. Wynter had missed many, many things up North, not least among them her cats and their strange, inhuman conversations. She looked down at the table, her lips compressed, and Razi waited patiently until she said, “What happened?”

  He took her hand, gently this time. “I don’t know the full story, Wyn. I don’t know much, if the truth be told. But Father got it into his head that the castle cats… well, that they knew secrets. That they knew something specific that he did not want known. I think he was afraid that they would talk, that they would tattle.”

  Wynter sniffed derisively at the thought of a cat tattling. But Razi’s expression was terribly sad, and he squeezed her hand. Oh Razi, what? Just say it.

  “He had them poisoned, Wyn. All of them.”

  She gasped, a high lamenting cry, and Marni turned her head sharply to look. Wynter tried to pull her hand from Razi’s grip, but he held on and reached over and grabbed her other hand, pulling her arms towards him so that she had to face him.

  “Shhh now,” he said, very firmly and low. “Shhhh.” His look said, Remember where you are. Remember who we are.

  Overwhelmed with sorrow, she struggled against his strong grip, and turned her head up to the ceiling, tears flowing freely down her face. Oh no, she thought, oh no. Not that.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Even GreyMother?” He nodded. “Even ButterTongue? SimonSmoke? Coriolanus?” A nod for each beloved name, and then no more nods, just a tragic, sympathetic tilt of his head as the list went on, her wrists still trapped in his hands, held up before him as if she were his prisoner.

  A Blatant Tomcat

  “That is enough now, girl! And you! Boy! Let go her wrists; you look like you’re trying to arrest her.”

  Marni’s harsh voice was low and commanding as she loomed above them, blocking them from prying eyes. Razi and Wynter leapt to obey her. He released her wrists as if burned and she took a sobbing breath and scrubbed the tears from her eyes. Marni handed Wynter a wet cloth, her face hard, and at the same time she shifted to keep her hidden from view. Wynter was grateful for the privacy while she cooled her burning face with the cloth.

  Marni looked from one to the other of them, her face a thundercloud. They had spent their childhood in her care, tottering around her feet like strays. Razi’s mother had never been interested in her son, except that he brought her nearer to the throne, and Alberon and Wynter had lost their mothers at birth, their love never known to them at all. Marni had raised the three of them like some kind of maternal bear lumbering through their early years. She had been their comfort and their rock, but she wasn’t soft or tender as some might expect a mother to be. She was loving in the hard, protective way that animals are loving. They were her cubs, and her cubs would survive, but to survive they’d have to be tough.

  “Oh, Marni, my cats… the ghosts…”

  “There’s worse than dead cats and silenced ghosts afoot, child. Remember who you are. Get yourself under control.”

  The bustle of the kitchen continued unabated behind her broad back, but still Marni spoke so low as to be barely audible to them. She put two wooden beakers onto the table with a sharp smacking sound.

  “Drink that,” she whispered fiercely, “all of it. Even you, boy!” She jabbed a finger at Razi, “Your Musulman God won’t strike you down for the sake of a little white wine cordial.”

  She glared at the two of them, the question in her eyes unmistakable. Are we all under control now? And they nodded their reply. Yes, Marni. She snorted like a bull and barged back into the fray.

  Alcohol should be avoided when angry or depressed. This was what Wynter’s father had taught her about drinking. Wine is for pleasure, not pain. Still, Wynter drained her cordial in a few swallows, because her throat was burning with tears and because the drink was cold and sweet and numbing. Razi sipped his obediently and then sat like a stone beside her. The kitchen pretended that nothing had happened.

  In the long silence that followed, Wynter felt the drink go to work on her head, and immediately regretted that she’d gulped it down so fast. Thank God she’d just eaten, because she began to suspect that there was a little more wine than cordial mixed into the brew.

  The drink, the heat of the kitchen, and Razi’s steadfast presence all combined with her long journey and her shock, and she was suddenly drenched in an almost unmanageable tiredness. If she could have laid her head onto the crumby table and drifted off without shaming herself in front of the staff, she would have.

  “Razi,” she mumbled, dredging up the words with an effort, “Let’s go outside. Let’s walk down to the river. Razi, let’s… let’s go for a swim.”

  Yes, they could find a place in the shade, under the willows maybe, and they could kick off their boots. She could strip to her underthings and just sleep like the dead while Razi watched over her, as he had done so many times when they were children.

  He shifted beside her, a shrug. There was genuine regret in his voice, but even so, his words gave her an unexpected and terrible pang of jealousy. “I can’t, little sister. I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Who?” she demanded, but Marni’s sudden bellow startled the two of them and distracted him so he didn’t hear.

  “Where the hell have you been?” The giant cook’s ferocious voice silenced the room for a moment so that everyone turned to see the object of her fury.

  A plump little maid was slinking up the basement stairs, cheeks all pink and heated-looking, a guilty expression on her face. She scurried towards the plate board and ducked past Marni, who lifted a meaty hand to her in mock threat. The blushing girl pushed her way in between the other maids and grabbed a cloth and a bottle of sweet oil and commenced to oiling the wooden platters for tonight’s meal. There immediately rose up an urgent and giggling whispered conversation between herself and her companions.

  Wynter was just turning to repeat her question to Razi when she noticed someone coming down the back stairs. Her immediate impression was that the King had hired a troupe of entertainers and that they’d sent a representative to negotiate with the kitchen for food.

  She watched him glide down the stairs, as light as a cat in his soft leather boots. Acrobat’s boots, she thought. He had that blatant confidence that comes from being part of a clan; the bold look that men only get when they have a gang of brothers backing them up. He’d either charm you or slit your throat, this one, and you’d never know the reason for either. Wynter suspected that you could search him for days and never find all the blades he had hidden behind his smile.

  She imagined that this young man’s people found him invaluable, but his skills wouldn’t be needed here. Unlike most castle kitchens, this one freely supplied the transient trades with food and drink. Still, he wasn’t to know that, and it would be interesting to see how he’d deal with the force of nature that was Marni.

  Wynter propped her heavy head in her hand and yawned; she was so very tired. She watched the man through bleary eyes, waiting for him to approach the cook. He paused halfway down the stairs and tucked his long hair behin
d his ear, assessing the room from a position of advantage, and Wynter had a moment to take a better look at him.

  He was young enough, eighteen, maybe even nineteen. Slight, with a cat’s sly grace. Maybe a head shorter than Razi. He was pale as milk and his face was narrow, watchful, almost amused, framed by a long curtain of straight black hair. He looked brazenly around him with no pretence at deference.

  Blatant, thought Wynter, and dangerous. Very dangerous, to himself and to others, because this one doesn’t know his place.

  She saw his eyes find Marni, who would make short shrift of him indeed if he kept that expression on his face. Wynter waited for the courtier’s mask of obsequiousness to slide itself into place, but to her surprise, his eyes moved past the big woman and settled on the pink-cheeked maid who had come in before him.

  A cold blade of comprehension slid up Wynter’s spine as the maid’s companions nudged each other. Wynter saw the girl shoot a quick glance over to where the young man now stood. He grinned at her, and she ducked her smiling head, her cheeks flaming, as the whole gaggle of maids dissolved into giggles. There was no doubt now where the young woman had been, and what had kept her late for work.

  Wynter sat up slowly, her distaste sparking to hot anger as the young rake dropped the maids a knowing wink and bit the tip of his tongue between his teeth in a gesture both suggestive and crude.

  Oh, you’re in for a shock, she thought viciously, you may be used to different, but this is not a household that makes toys of its women.

  Her hands bunched to fists and she went to say something to Razi, but stopped when the young man spotted them, raised his chin in greeting and began to come their way.